Hotel of the Week: A Restored Factory Emerges as Hudson’s Most Design-Forward Stay

Whether Victorian-framed townhouses rising from the riverfront or sprawling warehouses chockablock with vintage furniture and antiques, Hudson wears its age with pride. That same spirit defines the imposing factory at the New York town’s eastern edge, a red-brick behemoth and its largest landmarked structure. Originally built in the late 19th century as a textile mill, the structure later shifted to pocketbook production in the 1930s. After the machinery fell silent, interior designer Eleanor Ambos purchased the building in the early ‘90s and used it to house her formidable trove of antiques. Following her death in 2020, Hudson resident Sean Roland acquired the property with plans to reimagine it as a hotel shaped by the town’s idiosyncratic creative pulse. 

Pocketbook Hudson has now opened following a top-to-bottom reinvigoration led by Charlap Hyman & Herrero, marking the New York firm’s debut hospitality project. The 70,000-square-foot building has been carefully restored to house 46 guest rooms and suites defined by soaring proportions and a stylish mix of art and furniture by local talents. “We spent four years infusing this historic building with new spirit, honoring Hudson’s past while celebrating the vibrant community that continues to make this city a destination for creatives of all kinds,” says Roland, who developed the hotel with Gabriel Katz of MacArthur Holdings, former Ace Hotel Group design director Nancy Kim, and Jeremy Selman and Vipin Nambiar of HN Capital Partners. 

Charlap Hyman & Herrero began by organizing the factory’s cavernous open floors, which were completely unobstructed except for structural columns. From there, the team wanted every new insertion to register as a clear gesture set against the existing shell. They committed early to preserving the brick’s weathered surface. “We kept encountering moments where it would have been easier to replace or refinish it,” says designer Adam Charlap Hyman, “but we stayed with the idea that the brick should feel exactly as it did when we arrived.” Oversize original windows received the same care, drawing abundant daylight into rooms layered with warm, earthy tones. 

That commitment opened the door to unexpected material contrasts, stainless steel foremost among them. “It carries associations with machinery and function-driven architecture from the 1920s and ‘30s, including early spas filled with strange, almost theatrical pipe systems,” Charlap Hyman muses. The reference appears most vividly in guest suites, where metallic soaking tubs nestle comfortably just behind the beds, and echoes through mirrors and side tables fashioned from salvaged wood beams by Galerie Creative Mind artist Misha Kahn. The Hudson local’s imaginative creations surface through Pocketbook in surprising moments, like a retina-widening amalgamation of ceramic sinks that lends a psychedelic punch to the lobby bathroom. 

“From the beginning, we wanted artists involved as part of the hotel’s foundation,” explains Charlap Hyman, pointing to works by Katie Stout and artist WangShui, who also serves as the property’s creative director, that thread throughout the building. That impulse traces back to Zeze Hudson, an experimental Airbnb and artist residency WangShui and Roland developed in town a decade ago, which they outfitted entirely with artist-designed objects and furnishings contributed by their circle. “Bringing in artists from that community, which Andre and I are also part of, felt essential to the spirit of Pocketbook,” Charlap Hyman adds. Today, that lineage unfolds across Pocketbook through gestures both monumental and intimate, from Sophie Stone’s towering fiber works in the elevator lobbies to a large-scale Tschabalala Self painting in the atrium that nods to the building’s textile past, alongside drawings by Maryam Hoseini in guest suites as she prepares a mural for the restaurant. 

Pocketbook’s ties to the design community extend well beyond accommodations. The third floor recently opened as Show:Room, a cavernous gallery presenting home accessories by over 20 artisans, designers, and dealers. The mix includes a retail outpost for textile and wallpaper studio Zak+Fox, a Kahn-curated presentation of material oddities and offcuts, and an upstate outpost of Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery. The property will also host Kasuri, an avant-garde fashion boutique relocating after a decade on Warren Street, with a tightly edited selection spanning Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake. On the ground floor, the Pocketbook boutique gathers goods by many of the hotel’s collaborators, from moss-toned robes by Eckhaus Latta to pastel-hued home objects by Mamo Glassware.

The building’s most social corners invite the wider Hudson community inside. Guests and locals alike can settle into the clandestine club, where Charlap Hyman & Herrero arranged a louche landscape of custom oxblood leather sofas, before moving through to the restaurant, Ambos, named in tribute to the building’s former owner. The kitchen is led by executive chef Norberto Piattoni, an alum of Francis Mallmann whose cuisine draws on live fire, fermentation, and Hudson Valley bounty. At Ambos, that menu reflects that sensibility through dishes such as raw oysters accented with fermented tomato to house-made pastas and flavorful mutton and skate wing designed to be shared, followed by desserts that play with smoke and sweetness. 

That communal ethos will soon extend into wellness. Come January, the property will expand to include a dedicated bathing facility set within a freestanding historic structure of brick, timber, and limestone that once stored the factory’s textile fibers. The baths will offer restorative treatments drawn from global bathing cultures alongside wellness programming led by local practitioners. In a region where winter days stretch long and light can prove elusive, Pocketbook aims to counter the gloomy season with warmth and conviviality. As Roland puts it, “Our goal was to revive this regional landmark and create a place for locals and visitors alike to pause and connect over a shared appreciation for art, culture, and the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley.”